


The Hazard of Horns

by ellorgast



Series: Saadet Adaar [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Comedy, F/M, Fade to Black, Light BDSM, Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3068066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Horns are great, until you nearly stab your boyfriend in his only good eye because he didn't have the decency to warn you before he did that thing with his fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hazard of Horns

It was Iron Bull’s good eye that Saadet nearly impaled with her horn. It was his fault, she would defensively tell herself later. It was Bull who had leaned his face close to hers, Bull who had flicked his fingers _just so_ , and suddenly her senses escaped her and she reared her head back.

Then Bull was stumbling back, hand over his one good eye, roaring with laughter. “I will be no use to you blind, Kadan!”

“Maker!” Saadet blurted, darting forward as though she could do a damned thing to help him. Without thinking, she tried to bring her hands up to his face, but all they did was strain against the ropes that held them snugly tied behind her back. She stood uselessly in front of him instead, naked from the waist up and without the use of her arms. “Are you alright?”

Bull was still laughing, which might have been a good sign, but he had also found it terribly funny when he had been stabbed in the arm by a red Templar rogue. Actually, Bull seemed to find most injuries amusing, especially when there was a good story attached to them. 

She dearly hoped this was one story he would not regale the Chargers with in the pub.

“Would you stop giggling and let me see?”

“Sorry, Boss.” The name was a signal that the mood had been well and truly shattered now. The Iron Bull, so used to living a double life, always carefully kept who they were in the bedroom separate from who they were out in the world. Out there, she was Boss, because she was in charge. In here, though, she had other names. Kadan, when he was feeling tender. Adaar, when he wanted to put her in her place. Atashi--the word he used for dragon--in those rare moments when she challenged him, and she became a beast to be tamed. Each name made a thrill of anticipation twist in her stomach. She could lose herself in those names. 

But now she was Boss again. She was the Inquisitor, the Herald, the leader of armies, who was responsible for everything under her command. Including the giant beast of a man who was clutching his face and laughing his big grey ass off because laughing always beat crying. He lowered his hand, and she gasped at how close the thin red slash ran below his eyelid. “Andraste’s tits, I nearly _did_ blind you!”

Still grinning, Iron Bull glanced down at her freckled chest. “If you did, I must be hallucinating that Andraste-lady’s tits right now. I think I’m having a spiritual experience.”

If she were Kadan or Adaar right now, having her chest exposed, without the use of her arms to even make an effort at covering it, might have been arousing. But she was Boss, and so instead she was too annoyed to even blush at his look. “Stop making this a joke and untie me. I can’t do anything for you like this.”

He chuckled. “Yes, Boss.” She turned around, and felt the familiar tug of the ropes loosening. His thick, strong fingers quickly and expertly finding all the right releases. They kept a knife near the bed in case she ever needed a quick escape, but not once had he ever needed to cut through the rope. 

The ache of letting her arms down was always a part that she relished. She liked to slowly move them back around, feel the tingle on her skin as they got used to recovered freedom. But now she did not allow herself that moment of indulgence, and immediately turned and took Bull by the arm instead. “Right. Sit down on the bed while I get the elfroot.”

The field kit she kept in her nightstand had never been necessary before, though it was Bull who had insisted she have it. Like the knife, it was a simple safety measure that they had never needed to take. Saadet had always imagined that if it saw use, it would be Bull pulling it out to use on _her_ , not the other way around. The girlish romantic in her had even sort of fantasized about having her wounds tended to by him. Clearly that particular fantasy was going to be one of many that got crushed tonight.

She threw a blue silk robe around her shoulders--a luxurious gift from Josephine that did nothing against Skyhold’s cold winter nights. It was completely see-through, making it appropriate to wear only in front of Bull, but he did not care for such wrappings. He liked her whether she was armored from head to toe and covered in mud, or naked save the white silk ropes he so expertly tied. But he knew how much she valued it, and so he always took great pains not to damage it. Throwing it on now was for her own benefit, so she would feel a little less exposed.

He was still grinning when she sat down beside him with the bottle of elfroot and a clean rag. “How does it look? I bet it will leave an awesome scar.”

Saadet swallowed a guilty lump in her throat as she dabbed the elfroot-soaked rag over the cut. “It better not scar. I don’t want people asking you how you got it.”

“I will tell them the most beautiful beast I ever laid eyes on lashed out at me, and though I barely escaped with my life, it was worth the cost to see her so close.”

He was teasing her, and for that she punched him in the arm. It was like punching concrete. “You and Varric should collaborate. I’m sure his fans would adore it.”

“I speak the truth, Boss. A version of it, anyway.”

Saadet lowered the rag from his eye. Cleaned up, the cut was little more than a thin pink slash marring the grey flesh. It was certainly smaller and neater than many of the scars that criss-crossed his face. Still, she sighed, bunching the rag up in her fists. “It wasn’t worth it. It was an accident waiting to happen. These things…” she ran her fingers over the metal tips of her horns, the way they curved inward to end in a sharp tip, “they’re pointless. I should get them removed.”

“Heh. Pointless.”

She smacked him with the rag. “I’m serious! I could have really hurt you.”

He leaned forward and ran his own thick hand over her horn. Over the rough bone at the base, the thick metal pins that held the obsidian and pyrophite tips in place, down around the final loop that curved so tightly that he could almost wear it around his finger like a ring. The curve really should have made the sharp point mostly harmless, keeping the tip less likely to stab anyone. “I like your horns, Kadan. But why did you get them covered? All those nails in your horns means you meant for this to be a permanent thing.”

That name, the one he only ever said tenderly, eased some of the tension in her stomach. “I was seventeen. I had just joined the Valo-kas company. We were sent to hunt down a wyvern that had been killing livestock and terrorizing villagers. We took it down easily enough, but nobody told us there was a second one.”

Iron Bull grunted. “Never take a job without all the information.”

Saadet shrugged. “I was young, and Shokrakar wasn’t our leader then. She is more cautious. Anyway, the wyvern took me by surprise, tackled me to the ground. Broke some ribs and my right horn.” She brushed her fingers over the obsidian, where she knew the horn underneath was splintered and cracked. “I hated it. I hated how it looked, how it felt. I hated how one side of my head felt twice as heavy as the other.”

His fingers slid up her horn and met hers, warm and rough with calluses. “Mm, I bet that looked badass.”

“No, it looked silly. And I was tired of looking silly. I’m a seven-foot-one woman who grew up in a village of humans. I’ve always looked silly. To everyone. The freak. The cow.” Her eyes burned, and she did not know why she was still speaking. He did not need to know this. “The Valo-kas mercenaries… I almost never saw other people like me. It was such a relief to be like someone else. But it turned out I wasn’t. Most of them were tal-vashoth, grew up under the Qun like you. I was so… human to them.”

She was twisting the rag between her fists now, and Bull’s hand had dropped to the base of her horn, thumb brushing small circles over the fine peach fuzz of her newly shaved head. “I was so desperate to impress them. That broken horn was humiliating. I knew I could never be qunari enough for them. When I was little, I used to wish I could cut them off. Breaking one made me realize how much they meant to me.”

Bull’s voice was soft and warm, whiskey and cocoa. “Breaking them was an opportunity for you to cut them short, but you didn’t. You fixed them.” 

“It took me so long to save up the coin. Most of it I was setting aside for my parents. So they could own their own plot of land someday. But these… these were for me.”

He leaned closer, inspecting the top of her head. For all her height, he still managed to be just a little bit taller. “Well I like your horns. They are shiny. And different from any others. You are like no qunari or tal-vashoth in the world, Kadan. You could stand in the crowded streets of Par Vollen and you would stand out.”

Once, the idea of standing on the streets of Par Vallen and being one of many, no different from the rest, would have been a dream for her. Now Saadet smiled. “Maybe I should polish them more often, then.”

“More than that. These tips are battle-worn. You can see the dents and scratches. Why don’t you visit the creepy dwarf in the undercroft and ask her to make you something shiny? You can afford something better than pyrophite this time.”

“Maker,” Saadet breathed, “I could… I could use some of that paragon’s luster that we found in the desert. Or serpentstone!”

“Or volcanic aurum. Imagine if your horns were gold. What a sight you’d be then, the Inquisitor with the golden horns.” The note of pride in his voice made her stomach flutter with butterflies.

“You know, I’m sure we have some fade-touched metals stashed away down there.”

Bull pulled away. And slid a few inches down the bed. “If you are going to have magic-infused horns, then I am _definitely_ keeping my face away from them from now on.”

Saadet grinned. “Come on, they might glow in the dark. Don’t you want my horns to glow in the dark?”

“Your horns have nothing to do with what I want, but since you’re asking, no.”

She laughed, and hooked her fingers contemplatively in the right horn’s curled tip. “So no glowy stuff, and no sharp point.”

“Who said anything about changing the shape?”

“Well, if I’m going to keep stabbing you in the face…”

“I told you, Kadan. Your horns have nothing to do with I want. You get your needle-sharp head-knives, and I’ll worry about where I put my face.”

She stared at him, and wondered how something so little, so simple, could make her want to both laugh and cry all at once. She was not eight years old, eyeing the thick saw in the barn and wondering if she could angle her own head against the chopping block to cut through them. She was not eighteen, carrying the pieces of her broken horn in her pocket as though she could put them back together again. She could make them be whatever she wanted.

She grabbed him by one of his own horns, and twisted his head around to kiss him. The muffled grunt of surprise was exactly what she wanted--she so rarely managed to surprise him.

He pulled away, grinning. “That was nice, and all, but I never said you could kiss me, Adaar.”

The shift in titles brought a smirk to her face. Saadet stood, and paced to the grand windows, allowing the silk robe to slip off her shoulders as she did. “Oh? I thought I was Boss right now. I believe I still am.”

She kept her eyes on the starlight sky outside as he moved behind her, more quietly than anyone of his size had a right to move. She thought he would take her by her arm or her newly-bared shoulders, but it was her horn that he captured in his thick hand. Her breath caught in her throat as he gently tilted her head back. She could not move, like this, and they both knew it. “Sounds to me like you’re Atashi tonight.”

She smirked up at the ceiling. “Well I’ve already drawn blood.”

“You did. And for trying to blind me, you get to be blind tonight.” As the blindfold came over her eyes, Saadet let the silk robe drop to the floor.


End file.
